How the Watchmen movie killed the BioShock movie

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Video game movies tend to be subpar, often because Hollywood either doesn’t understand the source material or because the wrong game is chosen for an adaptation. Considering the decent writing and story, and — above all else — the fantastic atmosphere BioShock was able to create, the gaming world was understandably stoked when news of a BioShock movie adaptation broke back in 2008. It’s now five years later, and movie has been officially canned. However, Hollywood didn’t kill it, but Ken Levine himself took the movie adaptation of his own franchise and put it out to pasture.

The movie was being produced at Universal, with Gore Verbinski at the helm, best known for directing the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, as well as Rango, and the often underrated The Weather Man. The movie was to be a giant $200 million budget production, and considering the themes in the game and the places the story moves, it would’ve likely been R rated. However, The Watchmen — also a rated R film with mature themes and an enormous budget — recently underperformed, and was fresh in the studio’s mind. Fearing similar failure, the studio suggested the BioShock film be made with a budget of $80 million.

Levine said Verbinski didn’t want to do the movie with that kind of budget, so the studio replaced him with a new director, who Levine didn’t think shared the same vision for the film. So, for better or worse, he killed the project. Considering the lead on BioShock didn’t think the movie matched the game’s vision, it was probably for the better.

Rather than preventing cinematic joy, Levine most likely prevented more cinematic disappointment. However, it’s still unfortunate that a BioShock movie isn’t in the works, as a big budget film taking place in Rapture would create one of the best cinematic environments we’ve seen on film in a long time.